On having a world view, and why we probably don't need government.

I remember 2007.  The US was at war, business was booming and forward looking economists were shouting like crazy people in a downtown square: "this economical boom is unsustainable... are we headed for recession?" At the same the US was hated by many countries in the world because of  the Bush doctrine on foreign policy.  While these views were not the popular  in mainstream American media at the time, I was aware of it. The reason, I had a paper route, and listened to the BBC morning broadcasts on KGOU, our local NPR station.

I must say that this was not the easiest part of my life, and being a grad student with wife and kid, makes one do some pretty hard things, but as much as the paper route gave me about two hundred extra dollars per month, listing to international news helped to broaden my understanding of the world and helped me to keep an ear on the railroad of international business.

Seeing how the great recession of 2008 started, ended, and continues to affect the world economy, it is easy to see that many of our leaders have a very limited understanding about how the world works. Or that they are so caught up in their ideology that they are unwilling to get out of the box that is quickly turning into a coffin.  Let me try to explain this with my opinion of how four of the world's governments have dealt with economic policy since 2008.  I choose 2008 because it was a global economic resetting period, a view that many fail to admit.




China.  In 2008, China GDP growth was about 9.6%  and until now, China's government continued investing in the country's growth.

Germany. Through the recession years, the majority of the private sector stopped hiring, increased R&D spending. Government worked on making social nets stronger and cheaper. Invested in renewable energy especially solar.

US. Private business cut jobs at all levels to make business leaner.  Exported manufacturing to China. Invested in hydrocarbon exploration. Cut some R&D. Government applied stimulus, bailed out banking industry, tried to sure up social nets, government stalled.

UK. Austerity. Cut government spending.  Cut social net spending. Was unwilling to help financial sector for fear of "moral hazard"


As a scientist, my work is based on the belief that one point does not a trend make.  I won't even accept four points to make a callibration curve.  And while I am aware that the few macro econominc decisions made by the governments and business of these countries do not dictate the response of the economy as a whole. Normalizing the values and applying firm statistical functions to the data helps us to realize that we can learn from each other and make better economic decisions.

I can assume that policy leaders have access to the same data that I have. After all its free online.  But then again, most people get their information from The Daily Show and Fox News.  But I digress.

The point I am trying to make here is that we have a lot of data to drive our policy decisions, yet we govern on political ideology.  So why do we need government?

The 99 percent.

My wife the historian has a big Idea. She wants to prove that innovation and technology is not something that is created by a few, but actually the result of the collective and social response to solve a challenge. On the surface, it may seem that she is full of steam, but she is right.  Great ideas are the summation of the of many, yet only the great storytellers get the credit.

From an over simplified  standpoint, chemists use the knowledge that they gained in school and life to solve new challenges.  In the same way, engineers use their knowledge to make the world a more functional place.  To say that Steve jobs invented the iPhone is not a complete truth.  Instead, a more accurate statement would be that Apple Corporation invented the iPhone. Considering these examples, one could apply further analysis and make a more encompassing statement; the iPhone was the product of years of research that melded the concepts of accessing digital data on a relatively small handheld device. The fact that Steve jobs gets credit for iPhone discovery is simple.  He told the story.  He presented the Idea of a device that does all the stuff that the iPhone does, but he probably lead his designers to create a product that was beautiful.  And in this society perception is everything. The truth is tertiary.

iPhone was not the first smartphone, in fact before Apple's version of the miniature communication device, RIM ruled with their Blackberry for business (the 1%).  Apple made smartphones for the other 18 percent (relatively expensive) and then came Android for the other 30% (free to manufacturers).  What dictates availability of these technological leaps?  In my view it is utility.  Most people use their smartphone for playing games, communicating with their social circles, and for waking up in the morning.  Are there alternative ways to do all of these functions, sure.  But smartphones add the utility of mobility, and Steve made them seem cool.  And this leads me back to the original idea.  It is true that innovations are the culmination of the activities of the many.  Unfortunately, people are more concerned with the final product and its utility, and good storytellers are the ones who mainly get the credit.

This still does not answer the fundamental question, of the big Idea, which to me is: Why doesn't engineer X get credit for inventing the iPhone? Simple answer, because she was a drone, merly applying the concepts she learned in Engineering 2003, that  Engineer C, PhD. invented (or filed a patent on, or wrote a paper on) 100 years ago. As much as we humans believe that we are better and smarter than the animals, as we devise better ways of analyzing how the brain works and how organisms communicate, we will find out that they are as smart as we are... if not more.

We are all drones subject to the wills of the 50%, 10 %, 1%, 0.1% and the 0.001%.  But, what should be done to give credit to the ones that figure out the kinks in the big idea?  While we muddle through the problem, we need to get out of our line, take the unbeaten path, or become great story tellers.  After all, perception is everything, and humans mainly pay attention to the things that lie outside the line.

Still, I would like to thank the cell that makes up part of my epithelium, of my small intestine, that helps absorb the nutrients that I eat and keep me going... even though that cell died by the time I was done with this sentence.

Yes we can.

Americans were mesmerised by the entry of a young politician saying that American politics need to change.  That the typical Washington politics was bad for the nation, and that he could provide the "change we could believe in."  Well  he was right; and Washington is making this young man, now made old by the stresses of leading, doubt himself.

The question now is can we believe in change? What about the audacity of hope?  Will the pushback from the old boys club stop change?  Will the threats that austerity is more important than jobs win?  So many questions. So little answers.

I believe we can. I know its had. But the Libyan rebels did it.  And the market recovered. This too shall pass.  Yes we can.

Yea the right is up. And were spinning our wheels in snow, but the sun will come out. Yes we can.

I believe in the audacity of hope.  And I believe our president should stop being a politician, and be the man that made him become president in the first place. Now that's hope that I can believe in.

The US reminds me of the Roman Catholic Church and Microsoft

The diminishing relevance of the Roman Catholic church, can be attributed to a few causes, which can be summarized as such: When in the middle of a changing society, the insistance of the leadership on maintaing the status quo, leads to displeasure and the departure of the flock.

George W Bush, BinLadin and the Great Recession of 2008 changed the US. Deregulation of commerce, tax cuts, and funny accounting for the Iraq and Afganistan wars put the US economy in a bind. Then came Obama, and since 2008 he has been working diligently at fixing the economy, and so far he seems to be failing. This can be attributed to and I summarize, Obama is one of the few presidents that get it. He understands the plight of the American dream, and he wants to level the playing field so that more people can Dream big. But for those who never had a reason to dream BIG, they perceive life is just great, and that Obama is a dream killer. Unfortunately for America, Obama is going against other politicians who went grew up with their parents having already achieved the Dream. These politicians are Garders of the American Dream.

When one is a dreamer, she will fight against many odds to achieve it. Of course, depending on which theory one accepts, dreams can be figments of the imagination, or a glimpse into the subconscious. I believe that the American dream is both. People from many parts of the world congregate in the US and make imaginary things possible. Guarders of the dream, try to keep real things real. Society needs both dreamers and guarders. Dreamers create value and economic prosperity for their investors. Dreamers take problems and challenges, and create profits and solutions. Guarders put up road blocks, build walls, stage wars because of fear of new problems. Dreamers fail many times by not paying attention to the opinion that its a jungle out there. Guarders always fail by not realizing that life cannot exist in a vacuum. In a society that has a balance of dreamers and guarders, there is growth. However, only when the balance shifts to mostly guarders, does failure become imminent.

Regrettably, the US is becoming a society of mostly Guarders. Investors put their cash in ten year bonds at two percent interest, and purchase gold. And prosperous business pay the banks to keep cash. How is this different from stashing cash under ones mattress?

The catholic church failed to innovate when more people were able to read and interpret the bible. Microsoft failed to innovate when more people were using the internet. Thirty six percent of people between the age of 16 and 67 do not contribute to the labor force. These are a lot of idle dreamers, the devil can surely find work for about 110 522 358 hands. Additionally we need to pay attention to these 2241200 temporary dreamers and hope that they don't stop believing.

Many societies fail when the dominant forces listen not to the voices of the majority, and now in the US, we need the majority to dream big.

Government should be fired.

In a democracy, people elect officials to manage the social and economic well-being of the nation. In corporate and business institutions, economists and sociologists are hired to fill such positions, but, generally people elect political scientists, lawyers and rich people to look after their social and economic needs.

Sometimes I listen to punditry and laugh.

Schools, data mining and statistics

Many policy makers, school administrators and sometimes the general public attribute the problem of America's poor and increasingly failing education on the lack of financial resources and most of the time poor teachers. I believe they're only ten percent correct. 

As an analyst I am charged with deriving all of the possible reasons for an observed behavior, and then crunch the data down to a few variables that can be used to predict behavior.  One of the problems that I usually encounter with modern analytics software, is that most of them were designed for crunching numbers. In studying social phenomena, I believe that we should be crunching words, or at least we should work on software that can help us crunch words.

If we deconstruct the word education, the following key concepts are at play: learning, knowledge, imparting, acquiring, and evaluation.  Simplistically speaking, educators have to optimize the ability of teachers for imparting, and evaluation, while students have to optimize their ability for acquiring and learning the curriculum.  In the public discorse and the literature, we have extensively studied  the "imparting" and "evaluating" aspects of education, and  often marginalized the "acquiring" and "learning" aspects.  Very often policy makers rangle over hiring better teachers, or building better schools, while paying little focus on creating environments for learning or improving the students ability to acquire knowledge.

Knowledge, which I will loosely define as understanding, perception and reasoning of concepts, is a skill that has to be taught. Knowledge, like any other skill has to be imparted in environments that are conducive for retention.  For example, if a person wants to become a home builder, they need to learn facts about the trade, apprentice, and gradually become professional.  In the same way if our students have to learn the schools curriculum, they have to learn the skills necessary for acquiring random and perceptively useless information.  Next students have to apprentice, that is do homework, and gradually become proficient in learning.

For the homebuilder in training the motivation is internal.  If you ask many elementary students why they attend school you could imagine answers like "To play with my friends," "Because my mom says I need to learn" and so on.  In many cases the motivation for attending school is external at best. The question then becomes, How can we change the students perceptions of education, and, who is responsible for making students want to learn? 

Game changers

If you think about how any game is played and you realize its components you can change the game.

But you have to be patient and grow slow.

The nature of human sex.

People say that men think with their dicks. It is also true that women think with the opposite.  Nature intended it that way.

So I am free versing. I didn't think before I started writing, so there's a great probablility that someone will be offended. Reader beware.

I am not a girl, I have no sisters, and I have few female friends who are open enough to speak about sex.  I have read a lot, but well rounded people know that theory is an over simplification of any process. In the physical world theory works well most of the time, but humans... well we're all different. 

So boy's brains hang towards the left. And it is easy for gravity and motion to swing it either way.  Girls, on the other hand are anchored in place taking in the world (huge metaphor).  And were both driven by our brains.  Women hold the key to what gets in, while guys figure out how to get in. Of course the brain of the woman holds the key to life, and so women essentially have two brains. One, to let men's brain in, and the other to figure out how to keep the rifraff out.

To make this situation more complex, women's brains communicate with each other, and in making a decision the vote must be unanimous for a favorable outcome.  (Actually, men have two brains too, but the hanging one is buffer,faster, quick to decide, and high on natures best drug: testosterone. Heck it hangs above the supply of that good stuff. Thus the other brain is rendered to the role of the appendix, that is unless big brain gets in trouble. In those times big brain shrivels like skin in cold water).

I can say that nature was unfair making it this way, but that is just my illeterate brain speaking.

More on this later.

A new experiment

Since this weblog is essentially me shouting at from the top of the mountain, I suppose I wont be offending any one if I begin to focus on sex.

Sex is possibly the most fascinating subject that humans think about. It is possibly a fact that sex just like politics and religion, are the things most of us think about but feel hindered to speak about.  But me,  I have decided to join the ranks of those who speak openly.

So here goes.

I love talking about sex.  It is possible that I do so because I suck at it. Maybe my sex IQ is so great that my ideas about sex just freak people out.  Or maybe I am hanging with the wrong crowd.

So, in order to figure this all out, I am using writing. This may be educational. It may be offensive, and it may also be perosnal. Proceed with caution.

Looking Back.

Sometimes the best things are ahead of us.We learn more, we do more, we achieve.  And, as one learns, she can use the skills that were learned to apply in situations that are new, or in situations unrelated. 

One reason that some people work so hard is so that they can become better in the future.  One thing that many loose when focusing too much on the future, is the beauty that lies around us.  Sometimes, when we focus too much on what lies ahead, we miss the beauty that is so present and so beautiful behind us.

Catching the American dream.

This note is about American exceptionalism.  This is the idea that the united states of America is the awesomest place on the planet earth. In. The US anyone can be vertically mobile. Anyone can become anything they want to if they try hard enough.  While this idea is true, in general, this can happen anywhere in the world.
It may seem that I am highlighting the obvious, but if we consider how the statement of American exceptionalism, which for convience we will hereafter abbreviate as AE, is shouted around we would think that it was easy.

Truth be told, it is easier to become happy than achieve the American dream.

Bold statement right? Not really.  I started from zero. And, from this point I can see why people do all kinds of strange things to just taste a little of the pervibial American pie.  From an outsiders perspective, poor people in America own cars,have have cool gadgets like big televisions, smart phones and such.  Food is cheap. And one can find any job to make a living.

Of course the missleading notions  of the above statements is that just because one can pay ones bills they are self actualized.  That expensive objects make most people happy. 
These ponderings have lead me to conclude that AE is BS.

Lights

Sometimes,we are afraid to look outside especially when the sky is not so bright outside.  Sometimes the darkness makes us sad.  Bit what can we do?  Sometimes wee get paralysed by our fear.  Sometes there is nothing we can do about it.

Or can we?

Light is natural, it is also man made. Light is also the product of energy conversion.  Which leads to the observation that we can produce it if we try hard enough.